The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series took a week off from rubber-burning action after the STP 500, but now it’s revved up once again to deliver another edition of the Food City 500 at the famed Bristol Motor Speedway.
The last time out, we saw Jimmie Johnson secure his first win of the season in Texas. Should we expect the NASCAR legend to pull off back-to-back victories as he is known to do in years past, or will we crown a new winner in Bristol on Sunday? Let’s find out below what the experts have to say about this weekend’s race.
Fox Sports’ Chad Robb stuck to his guns from the STP 500 by going with Joey Logano again as the next race’s winner. This time around, though, Robb’s prediction is backed up by the fact that Logano has won twice at Bristol since 2014 and that the Team Penske standout has led the third-most laps at BMS over the last four races.
Furthermore, Robb also mentioned that Logano, who’s priced at +650 to win the Food City 500, has six top-six finishes in seven races this season thus far, making Sliced Bread a very sound pick to win it all this weekend.
Athlon Sports
Expert
Prediction
Athlon Sports
Kevin Harvick
Although long-running publication Athlon Sports generally covered just the Food City 500’s fantasy implications, we’d still benefit greatly from their insights on Kevin Harvick (+750) as the top driver heading into Bristol.
The Athlon Sports team mentioned that Harvick nabbed top-10 finishes in both of his trips to Thunder Valley in 2016 and that he even won on that track just last August. In addition, the Bakersfield native has a superb average finish of 12.0 and has led in 16.2 percent of laps at BMS over the last two seasons.
TopBet
Taken from last week’s complete preview, we here at TopBet went with Kyle Busch as the one who’ll make his backers at his price of +550 very happy customers.
Busch, like Logano, is still in search for his first win of the season. But unlike Joey, Kyle has an even better track record at Bristol as a three-time Food City 500 champ and a five-time winner at BMS overall. Not only that, the former Cup Series champion is also the leader in laps led in Thunder Valley amongst all active drivers over the last three seasons.
With a pair of podium finishes in his last three starts as well, there’s no other driver in this week’s field that has a potent combination of momentum and terrific history in this week’s course than Busch.
